I wanted to share something a little different with readers of Repro Rights Now this week.
Today, Religion Dispatches published my new article, “‘Abortion Was Not a Problem for Me’ — Remembering the Clergy Consultation Service.”
The story examines a part of abortion history that complicates one of the most persistent assumptions in American politics: that religion and abortion rights have always existed on opposite sides of the debate.
They haven’t.
Before Roe v. Wade, Christian and Jewish clergy across the United States participated in networks that counseled women facing unwanted pregnancies and, when women chose abortion, helped connect them with physicians they believed could provide safe care.
My article focuses particularly on the Clergy Consultation Service in Philadelphia and the memories of Rev. Ronald Lutz, one of the ministers involved.
In 1970, Life magazine reported that the Philadelphia service was counseling about 40 women every week. Women came to clergy frightened, isolated and sometimes desperate. Legal abortion remained available in only a handful of states, meaning obtaining one could require money, travel and finding a trustworthy physician through informal networks.
Lutz remembers some of those women more than half a century later.
One was a 13-year-old girl who arrived with her grandmother and stood silently by the door throughout the consultation. Another young woman feared what her father would do if he discovered she was pregnant. Others lacked support from their partners or families or simply didn’t know where they could safely turn.
What interested me most while reporting the story was that the clergy weren’t simply steering women toward abortion.
They talked with them about their options — including parenting, adoption, marriage and abortion — and tried to give them a place where they could consider their circumstances without condemnation. Philadelphia’s referral network also investigated physicians and clinics before sending women to them because an unsafe referral could have devastating consequences.
And the religious politics surrounding abortion were considerably more complicated than we sometimes remember.
Some churches opposed abortion. Some supported reforming abortion laws. Others struggled to reconcile opposition to abortion with compassion for women confronting pregnancies they felt unable to continue. Individual ministers sometimes went further than their denominations were willing to go.
Lutz was one of them.
His participation wasn’t something he advertised. When Life arranged a photograph of ministers involved with the Philadelphia network, Lutz recalls that roughly two dozen clergy were participating in the effort. Only he and Rev. Allen Hinand showed up to be photographed.
The others didn’t necessarily stop doing the work.
They simply didn’t want anyone to know.
That history feels particularly relevant now, when abortion is once again frequently framed as a battle between religious conviction and abortion rights.
The Clergy Consultation Service doesn’t prove that American religion was uniformly supportive of abortion before Roe. It wasn’t.
What it demonstrates is something more interesting: there was never a single religious position on abortion.
For thousands of clergy who participated in these networks around the country, helping a frightened woman wasn’t a rejection of their faith. Compassion toward someone confronting an extraordinarily difficult situation was part of what their faith demanded of them.
That is a history worth remembering.
Thanks, as always, for reading Repro Rights Now.
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